Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Ex-CM admitted KL can alter Sabah demography, RCI told

SABAH RCI Former
Sabah chief minister Harris Salleh once admitted that the federal
government was capable of altering Sabah's demography in its favour if
the then PBS-led state government did not toe its line.

Harris made this admission in a 1986 book titled 'Harris Salleh of Sabah'
written by Paul Raffaele, Upko secretary-general Wilfred Madius Tangau
told the royal commission of inquiry (RCI) on immigrants in Sabah in
Kota Kinabalu today.

Reading from the book, which is no longer published locally, Wilfred quoted Harris (left)
as saying that Kuala Lumpur would ensure the rights of Malays in Sabah
were protected and would intervene if the PBS-led government took
matters into its own hands.

"The federal government can register any of the refugees in three hours, three days, three months or three years.

"There
is no law stating the time and if the federal government wanted to
alter forever the voting patterns of Sabah, then it can do as easily as
assigning the papers.

"Already in Kudat, a PBS area now, over
3,000 Filipinos have their ICs and when they are registered to vote, the
assembly seat will be Usno's for the rest of this century at least.

"The
same pattern could be repeated all over Sabah so that the Kadazans
become a small minority," Wilfred quoted Harris as saying in the book.

PBS,
perceived as a non-Muslim bumiputera party, came to power in 1985 after
it broke away from the ruling incumbent Berjaya, a BN component party.

Berjaya
merged with Usno in 1990 to form Sabah Umno and as part of the BN
coalition in the state, it toppled the PBS-led state government in 1994
through defections, after PBS narrowly won in the state election that
year.

The fall of PBS was preceded
by at least two covert operations involving the National Registration
Department (NRD) to allow foreigners to vote between 1990 and 1995, one
operation by a group dubbed 'G17' and another operation dubbed 'Ops Durian Buruk'.
Sabah saw a heavy influx of Muslim Filipino refugees in the 1970s as there was a conflict in the southern Philippines.

Wilfred’s
revelation of the book appeared to have taken conducting officer Manoj
Kurup by surprise, who said he was not informed that it would be
tendered to the commission.‘PBS kept eye on immigrants’

Harris, who testified to the RCI during its first hearing in January, had denied that there was a covert citizenship-for-votes project to alter Sabah’s demographics in BN’s favour.

When
Manoj pointed this out, Wilfred rebutted: “When the book came out PBS
had lodged several police report on the book but he did not take any
action.”

Wilfred, who was a senior researcher with the Institute
for Development Studies (IDS) under the Sabah Chief Minister’s
Department during PBS rule, said his institute had embarked on a
large-scale project to register illegal immigrants between 1986 to 1988
in response to the book.

“This statement by Harris has been the
motivation for us (to conduct research) to see whether it is true that
this can be done (illegal granting of citizenship to subvert PBS’
power),” he said, adding that he did observe “certain patterns” over the
course of his work.

It is on this basis that he had also urged
the creation of an RCI to investigate the matter which today had
materialised, said Wilfred.

Only two witnesses took the stand today and a total of 118 witnesses have testified in this fifth hearing of the RCI.